Parenting Expectations: Younger and Older First-Time Parents

The transition to parenthood is a time of great interest to scholars. Because some parents prosper and others falter after the birth of their first child, understanding factors that influence this transition is of critical importance; one reason is the similarity (or lack thereof) between parents' prebirth parenting expectations. The present study examined (1) similarity between and typologies of first-time parents' parenting role expectations for one another, (2) whether older and younger parents differed in their degree of similarity, and (3) whether similarity related to changes in couple relationship quality. Analyses revealed that first-time parents generally were not similar in their views of what either mothers or fathers should be doing as parents. Where differences existed, both fathers and mothers tended to rate their own fulfillment of “nontraditional” roles more highly than did their partners. Younger and older first-time parents did not differ in their degree of (dis)similarity; regardless of age, first-time parents generally demonstrated unmatched parenting role expectations. Finally, differences in expectations at birth were not associated with parents' ratings of changes in relationship quality 6 months later. In much the same way as marriage education programs help premarital couples communicate about potential areas of disagreement, the present findings emphasize the need for similar prenatal programs for first-time parents.     

Jose Marti’s Confederate Affinities

ABSTRACT

Jose Marti examines the American Civil War and the period of Reconstruction through the lens of Cuba’s failed attempts at independence as a way of disenchanting modernizers and annexationists who, seeking rapprochement with the U.S., would compromise South American and, more specifically, Cuban sovereignty. More to the point, as much as Marti draws parallels between Cuba and the U.S. South vis-à-vis Spain and the U.S. North, respectively, his troubling affinity with the Confederacy and the postbellum South chiefly exposes the North’s ideological elision of its imperial project.     

A non-parametric statistic for testing conditional heteroscedasticity for unobserved component models

When prediction intervals are constructed using unobserved component models (UCM), problems can arise due to the possible existence of components that may or may not be conditionally heteroscedastic. Accurate coverage depends on correctly identifying the source of the heteroscedasticity. Different proposals for testing heteroscedasticity have been applied to UCM; however, in most cases, these procedures are unable to identify the heteroscedastic component correctly. The main issue is that test statistics are affected by the presence of serial correlation, causing the distribution of the statistic under conditional homoscedasticity to remain unknown. We propose a nonparametric statistic for testing heteroscedasticity based on the well-known Wilcoxon''s rank statistic. We study the asymptotic validation of the statistic and examine bootstrap procedures for approximating its finite sample distribution. Simulation results show an improvement in the size of the homoscedasticity tests and a power that is clearly comparable with the best alternative in the literature. We also apply the test on real inflation data. Looking for the presence of a conditionally heteroscedastic effect on the error terms, we arrive at conclusions that almost all cases are different than those given by the alternative test statistics presented in the literature.     

Utility of Child Report: Correspondence with Parent‐Reported Child Abuse Risk

• Use multiple informants.
• Children can provide useful information.
• Comprehensive abuse risk assessment.

     

The RFad Method--a new fatigue recovery time assessment for industrial activities

This paper presents a study about fatigue recovery time assessment processes in work activities. It came about due to a demand presented by an automotive industry giant, in need of updating existing cycle time sheets and TAKT time parameters. The company decided to hire an Ergonomics Laboratory with ties to a major Brazilian University in order to evaluate current conditions and establish a new method to either calculate recovery times or validate existing assessment criteria, based in the ergonomics evaluation of the work activities. It is clear that there has been evident evolution in the industrial sector in the past two decades. It brought up fast modernization of industrial processes, not only in production but also in terms of management systems. Due to improved computer and robotics systems, combined with overall operational advancements - like the use of lighter hand tools and more effective hoist systems - most work activities have had its physical effort requirements reduced in the past decades. Thus, compensation factors built into production times need to be reviewed in order to avoid unnecessary costs associated to them. By using ergonomics considerations, we prevent simply removing the physical variables built in rest time calculations without taking on account, for example, additional cognitive load represented by the use of more sophisticated pieces of equipment.     

Does education influence wildlife friendly landscaping preferences?

In sprawling metropolitan areas, residential landscaping is a major concern with respect to biodiversity conservation, and it could play a critical role in conserving wildlife habitat. In the United States, residential landscaping typically consists of maintained lawns with specimen plantings of non-native trees and shrubs; such designs provide poor habitat for urban wildlife species. We conducted a case study of Raleigh, North Carolina residents to determine how providing information about the benefits of native plant landscaping to bird species influenced urban residents’ landscaping preferences. We used Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests to determine if respondent preferences for 0, 50, 75 and 100 % native plant landscaping coverages changed after residents were informed about the benefits that native plants provide for birds. Initially, the 50 % native landscaping coverage was most preferred by residents; however, preferences for all four native plant landscaping coverage designs were significantly different after the informational treatment. Neutrality changed to opposition for the 0 % native plant coverage, while opposition changed to support and neutrality for the 75 and 100 % native plant coverage designs, respectively. After the informational treatment, the 50 and 75 % native plant landscaping coverage had the highest mean preference levels, although the 100 % design was ranked first more than any other design. Our findings suggest that residential support for native plant landscaping is higher than is reflected by typical residential landscaping practices, and that dissemination of information regarding the benefits of native plant landscaping to birds could alter public preferences for native plant landscaping.     

Nurse safety: How is safety climate related to affect and attitude?

Occupational accidents and injuries continue to be a critical concern for nurses, given the hazardous healthcare environment. This study advances the research on workplace safety by studying the process variables (i.e. job-related negative affect (JRNA) and job satisfaction) in explaining the relationship between safety climate and various safety criteria in nurses. Based on survey data from 326 nurses, our findings suggest that psychological safety climate is negatively related to JRNA, turnover intentions, safety workarounds, and workplace hazards. In addition, structural equation modelling indicated general support for a model in which psychological safety climate influences employee strain through job attitudes, including JRNA and job satisfaction. More specifically, job attitudes were found to mediate the relationship between psychological safety climate and turnover intentions, experience of hazards, and injuries. Safety workarounds did not significantly relate to injuries. The present study contributes to the ongoing improvement of interventions aimed at mitigating nurses’ injuries by integrating job attitudes into the safety climate–safety outcome framework.     

Managing Logistics in Regional Banknote Supply Chain Under Security Concerns

We study the logistics problem faced by Regional Branches (RBs) of a central bank in managing the currency supply under security concerns. While making banknote supply decisions to Sub‐Branches (SBs), the management of RB must achieve two goals simultaneously: (i) guarantee that each SB has sufficient inventories of all denominations of banknotes to satisfy the demands from all commercial banks within its service area, and (ii) control the annual spending on this banknote supply operation. Due to security concerns, the following methods are implemented in the process of transporting banknotes: (i) the capacity of a cash truck is limited by the total face value (instead of the physical space) of banknotes, and (ii) empty decoy trucks are deployed along with the trucks filled with banknotes. After deriving a polynomial‐time strategy to guarantee an optimal solution for the special Bin‐Packing Problem faced in this study, we provide an exact formulation for the RB's supply planning problem. We also propose several polynomial‐time algorithms for deriving either optimal or near‐optimal solutions for the problem under different settings. Using the weekly demand data obtained from the central bank, we verify the performance of our algorithms, and analyze the impacts of changes in these features and in the fleet capacity on the total cost incurred by an RB under various scenarios.     

The circulation of knowledge beyond the academia: On scholarly couplers at porous borders

With strong pressure to make academic research socially and economically relevant, academics face the problem of reconciling inherently academic products through which they are assessed (e.g. scientific articles) with other products that are often demanded by non-academic social actors. These products, which we call scholarly couplers, make up an important part of academic work, often ignored or underestimated in evaluation instances. In this article, we show how these types of products articulate with traditional ones and argue that academic production should be observed (and evaluated) through heterogeneous product chains, fostering more diverse academic profiles.